


Peace and Order

by Katerie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Just another day in the life of space diplomats, Politics, Random Encounters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 14:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katerie/pseuds/Katerie
Summary: Lance starts to see why Zarkon's been allowed to rule for over 10,000 years.





	Peace and Order

**Author's Note:**

> I renamed this to go along better with season 3. Good ol' alternate/parallel universes/realities.

Allura had already lost her patience with these particular aliens and stormed back to the castle. Shiro looked like he’d started to get angry, but then just sighed closed his eyes and said, “Lance, if they don’t want our help… we shouldn’t force it on them.” He sounded as baffled as Lance felt, but he was already walking back to the castle, albeit slowly. Hunk, Pidge, and Keith all turned to follow, all with somewhat dazed expressions on their faces.

Lance didn’t follow them. He shook his head. “I just don’t get it. Why would you guys prefer to stay under Galra rule when you could be free? What has Zarkon done to earn your loyalty?”

The alien—who was around eight feet tall—slowly looked down at Lance. These aliens did everything slowly. It was honestly kind of irritating. “Zarkon,” they began in their slow rumble of a voice, “has done nothing to earn our loyalty. But he has done nothing to deserve our rebellion either.”

“Nothing to deserve your rebellion?! Are you fucking joking? He conquered your planet along with thousands of others, killed millions--billions? gazillions?-- of people, and made even more into his slaves and you can stand there and say he’s done fucking nothing?!” Lance realized he maybe shouldn’t have started have started yelling near the end there and probably should have left out the cussing, but Allura and Shiro had left, effectively robbing him of his filter and he was really angry dammit.

Rather than taking offence, the alien just blinked. Slowly. Of course. “How old are you, Paladin of Voltron?”

Lance blinked—quickly for your information—at the non-sequitur. He’d at least had this conversation multiple times on other diplomatic missions and could answer even through confusion and anger “Um, I don’t know how you guys measure time, so I don’t know how to tell you how old I am.”

“Have you been alive since before Zarkon began conquering the universe?”

“WHAT? No, of course not. My lifespan will probably be like,” Lance paused because math really wasn’t his strong suite, “like 100 years—no, like 100 times shorter than that. Like at max. I probably won’t live that long with being shot at all the time, but like really healthy, safe humans can live for around one hundredth of the time that Zarkon has been out pulling his conquistador bullshit.”

Lance really didn’t like that he had just said that out loud. It made him uncomfortably aware of thoughts like, ‘How the hell do we even think we stand a chance when our lives are so short compared to Zarkon’s? He could literally just wait ‘til all us Paladins died of old age and go back to his business. Wouldn’t even be that big of a delay in his grand scheme of universal domination.’

 To distract himself from these thoughts he retorted, “Have YOU been alive since then?”

The alien slowly raised a hand and closed it into a fist, which Lance and the rest of Team Voltron had learned a little earlier, was this species’s way of saying, “No.” They had done it enough times that Lance was all too familiar with it. Lance opened his mouth tell this alien where they take that superior attitude if that was the case when the alien said, “But my older sister has been. My parents have living for roughly twice that amount of time.”

Lance, despite his anger, gaped, and said nothing.

“We have elders that are even three times as old as my parents,” the alien continued. “They have counseled against war with Zarkon. In fact, almost everyone that lived before Zarkon began his quest--” Lance scoffed at the word. Quests were Noble. Subjugating the universe was not “—says that life is generally better now that Zarkon is ruling our planet than it was before, even if that was not his intention. And thus, we feel no need to try to remove his influence.”

Lance continued gaping, but started spluttering. He eventually got out, “He—bett—there’s no fu—How has he made your lives better?! On every planet we’ve been to, the native people are either being enslaved or being taken off to God knows where! People die from exhaustion all the time and are punished for not working! Shiro—the Black Paladin—was some sort of gladiator for like a year! I don’t see how that could be an improvement.”

The alien did some weird movement that looked nothing like a shrug, but somehow came off as one. “You have been working on freeing the outlying planets that are currently being colonized. The people of those planets are just being brought under Zarkon’s rule, so he treats them harshly to teach them rebellion would be pointless. Soon, they will either accept Zarkon’s rule and the pressure he applies will lighten or, if he decides their planet has enough quintessence to make it worth harvesting, they will die.”

“A-aaa-and that’s just fine with you?! You basically just said Zarkon’ll either crush these people’s will or kill them, but you don’t think he’s a bad enough guy that you need to fight him.”

“And what would fighting him accomplish, young Paladin?”

“Oh I don’t know. Maybe stop him from killing and enslaving innocent people across the universe? But I guess we’ve already established that’s not your concern.”

“It is not the concern of my people—“

Lance cut him off. “Because your people are just fine here on this planet right?! Since he doesn’t want this planet’s quintessence and all you guys have to do is pay tribute.  Okay, whatever I get it. Why give a damn about other people’s suffering when you’re just fine, right?”

“It is not the concern of my people because we live long enough to know that if Zarkon were not doing these things, someone else would be.”

“What—“

This time the alien actually spoke quickly enough to interrupt Lance. “You and all those in your castle are young, and think that if you can defeat the evil you see in your lifetime, you will have defeated all evil for good. We are old enough that we have seen time and time again that this simply isn’t true. Make no mistake, Paladin; my people know that Zarkon’s actions are terrible, but there has never been a time in this universe when someone hasn’t been doing something just as bad.

“I told you my people’s lives have improved since Zarkon began his rule, and what I said was true. Before Zarkon overtook this solar system, the three planets with life on them were constantly warring, fighting over territory, political disputes, or anything else that could be used as an excuse for trying to destroy each other. You think Zarkon’s treatment of people is monstrous, and you are correct, but what he does is no worse than what we were already doing to each other. Our planet’s colonization was as brutal as those you have already seen, but fewer people died in our planet’s conquest than in the previous war. We have to pay tribute, but it’s smaller than what we were paying to the victors of the war before that. Our prisoners of war were treated worse than those in the Druid’s experiments. Even if Zarkon’s only intention was to gain power, he has also brought peace, and has therefore even gone so far as to indirectly save the lives of the soldiers and civilians that would have died in another pointless war.

"The way my people, see it, Zarkon commits atrocities that would have been committed anyway by someone else, and brings a level of order could not otherwise exist. And so, we are not loyal to Zarkon’s evil, but we will not rebel against the peace it has brought.”

Lance’s brain stalled. He was sure that was the wrong logic but he wasn’t quite sure how to prove it. He knew that Zarkon couldn’t be accidentally bringing peace. The suggestion was absurd. But he felt very confused, and very angry, and this alien was clearly too old to be convinced by whatever Lance would say, so he just settled for, “Whatever. Enjoy your peaceful imprisonment,” and turned away back towards the castle.

The alien’s low voice followed him, “Better than a war-torn freedom, young Paladin.”


End file.
